I've packaged the latest stable version of the AbiWord word processor for VL 6.0. I've also packaged the latest enchant, which interfaces AbiWord to a number of spellcheckers including aspell (used in VL Standard) and ispell (used in VL Light). The abiword-extras package used to be part of the main AbiWord package and is made up of "large files and files that don't change often". It is recommended as part of an AbiWord installation.

abiword-extras: abiword-extras (files used by AbiSuite)abiword-extras:abiword-extras: This directory tree contains GPL or GPL-compatible filesabiword-extras: used by AbiSuite that are very big and/or that don't changeabiword-extras: very often.abiword-extras:abiword-extras:abiword-extras:abiword-extras:abiword-extras: License: GPL & various GPL-compatibleabiword-extras: Website: http://www.abisource.com

After testing these packages please take a moment and come back to this thread to let us know how they work for you.[/code][/code]

Did you install the separate abiword-docs package? I'm wondering if that being absent the cause of your issue. I can't replicate what you're seeing. I can get into a situation where the help simply doesn't launch. I'm running VL Light 6.0 a0.12.

Bonobo has been a dependency of AbiWord at least since the 2.4.x days. It's part of GNOME. No, I don't know what it does. Avahi makes very little sense since it's dynamic DNS. It was required by one of the GNOME dependencies (libgnomprintui, if I remember correctly) which AbiWord does depend on. GNOME has become a maze of interlinking dependencies and AbiWord's use of three libraries causes all sorts of nonsense. Look at the dependencies in the GSB package (2.6.3). There's even more cruft. I don't see a way around that.

Check your default browser setting. If it's set to Epiphany try changing to something else you have installed (Firefox, Seamonkey) and see if that works.

I already did that, both in XFce's Preferred Applications and in ~/.bashrc. In both places the default browser is set to SeaMonkey. I "jiggled the handle" by changing the default browser to Firefox in hopes that might change AbiWord's mind, but I still got the same message about Epiphany and Mozilla failing to initialize. I can't find Epiphany referenced anywhere. Epiphany itself won't start. (I didn't install it specifically; it came along with Gnome.) Thinking maybe Epiphany was munged, I reinstalled it through GSlapt. Didn't help--same messages as before.

I don't know where Gnome keeps its settings. I'd like to see what Gnome thinks is the default browser and change that. I don't use Gnome. I installed it to get the libraries in case I needed to compile my important applications like Inkscape and Gimp. I'm now thinking that installing Gnome was a bad idea.--GrannyGeek

Before I assume there is something wrong with the AbiWord package (which is entirely possible) I'd like to see if anyone has this problem with a newer alpha build. I'm wondering if this is an AbiWord problem or an a0.12+GNOME+AbiWord problem. I did build this package on a machine that did not have GNOME installed and which should have only what was absolutely required to build from GSB (lingnomeprint, lingnomeprintui and their dependencies).

If you do try a newer alpha build I'd really appreciate if you can try these packages again.

this is not an abiword problem.the help browser doesnt come up at all and I dont get any error on A0.33.gconf has its default browser set as epiphany so if it is not installed nothing happens.epiphany needs the gsb firefox-2 installed to work.the way around this is to change the default browser in gconfthe only way I have found to do this is from the gnome control center(which means a full gnome install), Orfrom the CL like below

I installed VL6 a 0.33 today and updated AbiWord, including installing Abiword Docs. I did not install Gnome.

The Help menu did not work and there was no error message such as I got when I had Gnome installed on 0.12. I did find the problem, though, and now the Help menu does bring up the documentation in a browser.

The path installed by the abiword-docs package does not match up with what AbiWord is looking for. I discovered this by running AbiWord 2.6.2 on my 5.9 Standard laptop, where Help works, and noticing where it found the docs. The package puts them in /usr/share/abiword-2.6/help but AbiWord looks for them in /usr/share/abiword-2.6/AbiWord/help/en-US. I fixed that by creating the directory and adding a symlink to /usr/share/abiword-2.6/help. As I recall, this "wrong path" issue goes back maybe even to VL 5.9 Standard.--GrannyGeek

@GrannyGeek: Thank you so much for testing and troubleshooting this. I haven't been online much (an injured shoulder makes typing painful) but I will rebuild this package with the required symlink in the doinst.sh. That's a nice, easy fix.

Sorry to hear about your shoulder injury, caitlyn. I know from experience that a bad shoulder can make typing and mousing very uncomfortable. A couple of years ago I was having shoulder pain that made using a desktop computer difficult. I wound up getting a new chair for my home office, one with arms at the right height and a high back that supported my head. I found that having to hold up my head without support caused stress on my shoulders.

I hope my analysis of the AbiWord Docs situation was accurate. All I can say is it works for me.

I am lucky to have five VectorLinux partitions on three computers. Three are VL 5.9 Standard Deluxe. On the Celeron desktop I have in addition two partitions for VL 6 testing: .12 and .33. The next test version I install will go on the .12 partition, replacing it. With all these partitions I can compare things when something works on one or more computers but not another.--GrannyGeek